Community Engaged Faculty Fellows

The Community Engaged Faculty Fellows Program is a learning community focused on community engagement. The fellows keep current with literature and teach or have taught service-learning courses. The members were affirmed through the Provost and membership spans a wide range of departments within NC State.

The responsibility of the fellows is to serve as mentors for those interested in learning more about community engaged practices. Each fellow advocates for community-engaged activities and practice community engagement differently and are more than happy to share these methods with you.

If you would like to know more or get connected with a fellow, please contact any of our fellows noted below.

2015-2016 Engaged Faculty Fellows

Biography: Dr. Kate Annett-Hitchcock serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management in the College of Textiles. Her research and professional work is focused on helping all people improve their health, well-being, and quality of life through intelligent and inclusive clothing design. She works with community partners such as the Raleigh Lions Club for the Blind and Redress Raleigh, and has sponsored students to attend the Emerging Issues Forum and to collaborate with these and other community partners to address the physical, environmental and social barriers for people with disabilities. Her senior design students have worked with the Wheelchair Basketball teams and Blind Bowling League of Raleigh to promote well-being and enhance quality of life through functional apparel design. She also designs period reproduction clothing for interpretive staff of historic houses and museums, and her honors students designed costumes and led public presentations for the Titanic exhibit at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Biography: Dr. Sarah Ash, NC State’s winner of a Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, pushes her students to engage critically with the world around them. In particular, she and her colleagues have developed the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection (Describe, Examine, Articulate Learning) that is designed to generate, deepen and document learning, especially in the context of service-learning, internships and other experiential learning settings.

Biography: John is an Associate Professor of School Psychology. He was born in Detroit, MI and has since lived in various parts of the country. John’s primary interests relate to issues of educational equity, such as trying to improve educational equity through academic intervention, effective community–university partnerships, enhancing school-based systems, and internationalization. He has received several grants and awards for his teaching, research, and community engagement activities, including grants to improve literacy development for children nationally and internationally. John’s commitment to engagement is deep, and considers his role as a professor most satisfying when he can meaningfully merge teaching, research, and service. As one example of this type of work, John founded Helps Education Fund, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that offers various forms of free and research-based support for educators and parents. This nonprofit also allows several opportunities for research, university-community partnerships, and involvement from university students within and outside of NC State University.

Biography: Andrew is an Associate Professor of Human Development and a Cooperative Extension Specialist. For the last 20 years Andrew has worked with partners to develop educational programs for Spanish-speaking families, while simultaneously studying the effectiveness of these programs. In 2007, Andrew and Cintia Aguilar developed the Juntos Program to help Latino families come together to make higher education a reality for Latino youth. As a Family Scientist Andrew’s research and outreach efforts have resulted in over 30 grants and resulted in many published articles in the areas: academic achievement among Latino youth, parent involvement in academics, dropout prevention, and access to higher education. Andrew also works to provide educational content and resources to military serving professionals and to military families to help them succeed. Over the last couple decades years he has carried-out 5 military projects and research endeavors to help support military families. As an Associate Professor, Andrew also teaches 4 graduate courses each year and mentors undergraduate and graduate students. His life mission is helping youth and their families thrive and live healthy lives in North Carolina and beyond.

Example Community Engaged Course Taught: YFCS 543: Applied Concepts in Parenting and Family Life Education

Biography: Dr. Brookins is an Associate Professor of Psychology (Applied Social and Community program) and Africana Studies and former Director of Africana Studies and the Africa Project). He received his BA from Bradley University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University where he specialized in Ecological/Community Psychology. Dr. Brookins research is embedded within an engagement scholarship paradigm and primarily focuses on on interventions designed to promote psychological health and development for both people and the communities in which they live. Utilizing a participatory action research framework, Dr. Brookins has developed, implemented and worked with several organizations within and external to NC State on educational interventions with African American youth, the impact of international educational experiences, effective institutional supports for underrepresented scholars in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, building community capacity in both urban and rural areas of North Carolina. Most recently, he has been a co-PI on two interdisciplinary research teams working with the city of Raleigh and in Western North Carolina to build a collective impact model of community-university engagement. Dr. Brookins has been awarded an Alumni Distinguished Award for Extension and is a member of the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension at NC State. And finally, Dr. Brookins has been selected as a 2018-19 ACE Fellow

Biography: Dr. Willa Casstevens serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work. She is the P.I.Project Director on a $253,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for NC State’s Campus Suicide Prevention Program, which involved over 20 campus and community partners in suicide awareness and prevention activities. In addition, she has received other grants focused on enhancing graduate student retention in Social Work, enhancing core competencies in training students, and other health and wellness programming models for non-profit organizations. She regularly teaches Social Work graduate students who have concurrent, community-based field placements alongside their course work and has taught the graduate Capstone course in which students develop and carry out evaluation projects with their community or agency partners that can lead to organizational improvements.

Biography: Dr. Diane Chapman serves as both Director of the Office of Faculty Development and as a Teaching Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development in the College of Education. Her research interests include program evaluation in workforce development, virtual human resource development, engaged research and teaching, and instructional technology in teaching. She is a senior researcher on a $525,000 John M. Belk Endowment project to support scaled, sustainable community college reform efforts to create a pipeline of future leaders, and Co-PI of a $300,000 Golden Leaf Foundation grant to evaluate their Mid-Skills Workforce Training Initiative. This Spring, she was involved in developing NC State’s first Community Engaged Scholarship Institute to train other NC State faculty on best practices for engaged research. Previously, she has received the Gertrude Cox Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching and Learning with Technology, the Outstanding Teacher Award, the Alumni Association Outstanding Extension and Outreach award, and has been inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Teachers and the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension.

Biography: Andy Fox, RLA, ASLA is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, where he also serves as a research associate at the Natural Learning Initiative. As a registered landscape architect, Andy specializes in the areas of landscape architecture, urban design, green infrastructure, community participation, and site construction. Andy’s work is most interested in the development of sustainable landscapes and their resultant impacts on cognitive, social, and cultural behaviors, with a specific focus on public landscapes and strategic partnerships. Toward these ends, his teaching, research, and engagement efforts include the design, development, and study of naturalized educational environments and the integration of low impact development strategies and context sensitive solutions at all scales. In partnership with University Housing and numerous other campus partners, Andy oversees the Landscape Architecture Design + Build Studio. This hands-on teaching, learning, and engagement initiative creates ecologically and experientially rich environments across the NC State campus. While at NC State, Andy has been designated a University Faculty Scholar, inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension, and received numerous university awards, including the Opal Mann Green Engagement Award, a NC State Outstanding Teacher Award, the North Carolina Housing Officers Faculty Partnership and Academic Collaboration Award, the NC State Outstanding Extension Service Award, and the Earthwise Faculty Award for Outstanding Achievement in Environmental Sustainability on Camp

Biography: Dr. Suzie Goodell received her PhD from the University of Connecticut in Nutritional Sciences and completed her dietetic internship from Cornell University. Her research focuses on childhood obesity prevention and intervention and the relationships between preschool-aged children and the adults in their lives. She observes the interactions that occur between parents, caregivers, and young children during mealtime and then studies the impact these interactions might have on a child’s food consumption and learned eating behaviors. In addition, she develops and implements theory-based obesity prevention interventions for low-income, minority populations based on sound observational investigations and qualitative research. Through teaching and research, Dr. Goodell focuses on service-learning and opportunities to engage students in work in the community. In addition to her research, Dr. Goodell teaches two service-learning based courses, Community Nutrition and the major’s senior capstone Experience in Teaching, Research or Service in Nutrition

Biography: Dr. Grimmett is an Associate Professor, coordinator for clinical mental health counseling, and founder and co-director of the Community Counseling, Education, and Research Center (CCERC) of the counselor education program at NC State University. His courses include Introduction to Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Multicultural Counseling, Gender Issues in Counseling, and Advanced Multicultural Counseling, Advocacy, and Activism. Dr. Grimmett also provides supervision for Internship in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and supervision of supervision for doctoral students. The conceptual framework for Dr. Grimmett’s research is titled R.A.D.I.C.A.L. scholarship, which means Research Action to Deconstruct Institutionalized Cultures and Advocate for Liberation. This framework currently includes four areas of concentration and corresponding goals, which are: preventing gender-based violence through education, activism, male engagement, and community partnerships; facilitating access to preventive community mental health counseling services; transforming contextual and systemic factors to promote the healthy development of African American males; and developing multicultural and social justice counselor education teaching and research methods.

Biography: In everything I teach, my goals are to (1) excite students about the prospect of continuous learning and the process of figuring things out for themselves, (2) focus explicitly on professional skills, including collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and organization, and (3) place students in the types of situations they will encounter after graduation by using engaged, project-based approaches to teaching. In research, I focus on the conservation of open spaces in suburbanizing regions, particularly as habitat for native plants and animals. My research efforts have three major thrusts: (1) improve the breadth and quality of ecologically-based information available to land use planners; (2) develop approaches to incorporating scientific findings about conservation into local planning activities by engaging with community partners; and (3) support the active engagement of students with community partners to address local conservation challenges.

Audrey J. Jaeger, Professor of Higher Education and Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor, NC State University. Dr. Jaeger directs the National Initiative for Leadership and Institutional Effectiveness (NILIE – nilie.ncsu.edu), an organization focusing on cultural assessment of leadership to improve student success. Dr. Jaeger leads Envisioning Excellence for Community College Leadership (EE2 – envisioningexcellence.com) an initiative at NC State designed to enhance and expand NC State’s historic relationship with North Carolina’s community colleges. Her research examines relationships and experiences among faculty and students that illuminate issues of transition, access, climate, agency, and community engagement. Dr. Jaeger is an associate editor for Research in Higher Education and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Higher Education and Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. Dr. Jaeger is a 2017 induction into the Academy of Community Engaged Scholarship.

Biography: Jessica Katz Jameson, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University. She teaches courses and conducts community-engaged research on the topics of organizational communication, conflict management, and nonprofit leadership. Current research projects involve partnerships with law schools to promote improved mental health and well-being through mediation training and practice as well as a partnership with the Laboratory for Analytic Science to study and facilitate cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration. She is past chair of the Academic Council for the Institute for Nonprofit Research, Education and Engagement and serves on the Extension, Engagement and Economic Development task force for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She was co-facilitator of EDGES, Education and Discovery Grounded in Engaged Scholarship, a faculty development program to promote and build capacity for engaged scholarship at NC State.

Biography: Dr. Edward L. Kick is a Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Professor of Sociology, at North Carolina State University. Dr. Kick publishes articles and books on the world system, environment, community building, and sustainability. Up until recently he served as the co-Editor of the Journal of World-Systems Research, and he has served for seventeen years as university administrator. His research and mentoring of students is primarily quantitative and cross-national in nature, although he also has conducted more intensive studies of countries, such as his case study of peanut farmers in Ghana, Africa. In recent years he has published on a variety of subjects that he ties together as part of writing and teaching. This work includes: decision making by disaster victims in the wake of catastrophic events, such as hurricanes and flooding; what is called “the ecological footprint” or the environmental well-being of the world and nations; the military and its influences on world and national hunger; the linkages between open markets, national sound money policies and “comparative advantage” on national modernization; community building in the US and abroad with its attendant displacement of populations, and the impact of human and infrastructural waste on the well-being of those who live close to dumping sites.

Biography: Dr. James Kiwanuka-Tondo has taught numerous courses including Communication Research Methods, Communication Campaigns, Intercultural/International Communication, Public Relations Applications (PR Campaigns), Media Effects, Interpersonal Communication, Small Group Communication, and Feature Writing. His research interest is health communication campaigns, especially the AIDS campaigns. His work has been published in the Journal of Health Communication, among others. Dr. Kiwanuka-Tondo was awarded a grant worth $20,000 from the John M. Lloyd Foundation to study the effectiveness of the Uganda campaigns. He has received several grants from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the British Council, UNESCO, the University of Connecticut, and North Carolina State University. Dr. Kiwanuka-Tondo was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Central Connecticut State Univ. for one year and the Univ. of Connecticut for three years. He was also Head of School of Journalism, Uganda Management Institute, for three years. He received the Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award 2008, Dept. of Communication, NC State Univ.; the Advocacy Award for Promoting the Presence of African American at NC State Univ.; the Outstanding Teacher Award, Dept. of Communication, NC State Univ., spring 2007; the Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, 1999, University of Connecticut. He is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, the British Commonwealth Technical Assistance Scholarship, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar.

Biography: Dr. Jay Levine is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Department of Population Health and Pathobiology here in the College of Veterinary Medicine. He is active in promoting environmental education, and environmental restoration as a conduit to local economic development. From his role in NC State’s Aquatic Epidemiology and Conservation Laboratory, his research focuses on the health of freshwater ecosystems, freshwater invertebrates and shellfish safety. Dr. Levine promotes aquaculture production and the role of aquaculture to ensure food safety, security, and local economic development. The winner of numerous NC State and external awards, he regularly involves undergraduate and graduate students in his wet laboratory and field research to develop their research skills. In support of animal welfare he conducts animal cruelty investigations. Other outreach activities include serving on the Advisory Board for the development of the Sturgeon City Environmental Education Center and Recreational Complex, participation in The Sturgeon City Youth Leadership Institute, and coordination of the Hill St. Homework Haven which is an after-school program promoting academic success for K-12 children.

Biography: Annette Moore is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She received her Master’s degree in Recreation Management from Northeastern University and completed her Ph.D. in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She joined NC State’s faculty in 1992, with primary focus being teaching undergraduate courses in recreation program planning and the department’s introductory course. Annette’s students are engaged with the community in both her first year, introductory course (a 4-hour experience), and in her junior-level recreation program planning class (PRT 358), a full-immersion service-learning course. Community partners, vital to the success of student learning in PRT 358, have been engaged since Spring 2001.With a professional focus of providing opportunities for students to becoming immersed in learning experiences, Annette has found study abroad to be a natural extension of her teaching approach. Since 2006, she has co-directed summer study abroad programs to Australia and New Zealand.

Example Community Engaged Course Taught: PRT 358, The Recreation Program

Biography: Dr. Schroeder-Moreno is an ecologist by training and received her B.S. at UC Irvine in Applied Ecology in 1996 and her Ph.D. in Ecology, with an emphasis on Tropical Ecology, at the University of Miami in 2003. Her interests are twofold and include developing new agroecology and sustainable agriculture education curriculum at NC State that and developing research projects that focus on understanding the benefits of mycorrhizal fungi and associated sustainable management practices for a variety of production systems. Dr. Schroeder-Moreno’s primary role is directing the new Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems BS degree, Agroecology Minor, and teaching and advising students. She also directs the Agroecology Education Farm, advises for the student run Campus Farmers Market at NC State and serves as the Assistant Director of Educational Programs at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS).

Biography: Dr. Wiseman has been committed to collaborating with and researching literacy learning that builds on connections between universities, public school classrooms, after-school programs, and families. As a former elementary school teacher and literacy specialist, her understanding of literacy learning is grounded in classroom experiences and interactions with students in diverse urban and suburban settings. Research projects have focused on children’s responses to social issues, such as bullying or racism, through multimodal texts, which include books, film, videos, and photographs. Her research, which has been published in journals such as Reading Writing Quarterly, Language Arts, and Children’s Literature in Education, demonstrates how responses that build on students understanding and engagement lead to deeper and more complex learning. Dr. Wiseman is currently involved in a grant with community partners entitled Communities United for Success in Family Literacy, which is family literacy program designed to support formerly incarcerated adults and their children as they transition out of prison. This project was funded through the Extension, Engagement, & Economic Development Seed Grant Program at NCSU, which provides opportunities for faculty to design programs to address the needs of citizens of North Carolina and beyond. This program features interactive sessions that promote reading at home to build academic growth while fostering positive relationships.